Description

Eight-year-old genius Billy "Commander Keen" Blaze, the hero of the universe, the saver of planets has a problem: his mom forces him to eat yucky vegetables. This night, he dreams that he found himself in the land of Tuberia, where sentient vegetables live and reign supreme, and where the evil king Boobus Tuber enslaves children brought by his Dream Machine.

The objective is to reach and destroy king Boobus Tuber, but before this happens, Keen must find a number of Boobus Bombs which are the only things that can harm the king. The game begins with a top-down map of the land of Tuberia. This is the level select screen, where you can walk around and choose the next level you want to enter. On each level, you have to make your way to the exit, collecting Boobus Bombs on the way if there are any on this level. Once you finish the level, you're back on the overhead map.

The levels are full of evil vegetables of all kinds and deadly hazards. If Keen gets hit or touched by an enemy, or falls into a pit or touches something hazardous, he dies, and you lose one life.

Unlike in other Commander Keen games, Keen does not have a raygun or a pogo stick to help himself. Rather, Keen fights his enemies with "Flower Power" - special bombs which can be thrown to temporarily turn enemies into harmless flowers. If they miss an enemy and fall to the ground, they can be retrieved. Other items to find include: keys to open locked doors, bonus points that give score, an extra life and a rare "magic eyeball" which gives three extra lives and a lot of ammo.

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Trivia

Music

This game was originally to have music created by Commander Keen composer Bobby Prince, but the music was scrapped at the last minute to make it all fit on one disk. This is why the song entitled "Eat Your Veggies" is in Commander Keen 4: Secret of the Oracle.

Series

This is sometimes referred to as the "Lost Episode" of Commander Keen. According to Joe Siegler of Apogee, he called it
Keen Episode 3.5. The reason stated for this is that the game falls between the Invasion of the Vorticons series (Episodes 1-3) and the Goodbye Galaxy series (Episode 4 and 5).

Softdisk

Unlike the other Keen games this game was not published by Apogee but by Softdisk. The id developers were all former Softdisk employees and when they formed id, the group still had the obligation to produce a couple of games for Softdisk.

Removal from Steam

The game was removed from Steam on July 19, 2017, after Valve severed their relationship with the publisher due to multiple complaints about their behavior - and changing their company name into an insult against Gabe Newell, one of Valve's founders.